The ‘Californication’ of Northern Virginia: Liberal hubs dominating state politics called national trend

Three liberal counties are dominating the political landscape in Virginia and “the rest of the state is carried along inexorably, and unwillingly, by the irresistible hordes of Northern Virginia’s superior numbers,” a columnist wrote.

“Ole Virginny is no more,” A.J. Rice, CEO of Publius Public Relations, wrote for The Washington Times.

Fairfax County “has been described – accurately – as the San Francisco of the New South,” Rice wrote. “Its politics are similar – from support for gun control and open borders/amnesty to the micromanagement of businesses by a conga line of busybody agencies.”

Fairfax County “is home to the high occupancy vehicle lane (HOV), which punishes people who don’t want to, or simply can’t, carpool to work,” Rice wrote. “It issued a ‘Climate Stabilization Declaration’ demanding an ’80 percent reduction’ in ‘global warming’ gasses by 2050 – a verbatim affirmation of California’s insane declaration.”

Rice noted that when he “moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia during the George W. Bush administration, it was to escape a blue state for a red one. I never even considered living in D.C. or Maryland to avoid liberalism. That decision now looks like a wash.”

The “Californication” of Virginia was evident in the 2018 midterm elections as, Rice noted, “the vast majority of Virginia’s 95 counties went red – typically by margins of 2-1 or more. In several cases, by margins of 3-1.”

“Fairfax County gave Kaine 71.1 percent to Stewart’s 26.9 percent,” Rice noted. “Adjacent Loudoun, Prince William and Stafford counties went Kaine, too – though not quite as lopsidedly.”

“These are the most populous areas of the state, which is electorally decisive in a contest that is decided by the popular vote of the entire state, aggregated,” Rice wrote.

For example, in Franklin County, outside of Roanoke, Stewart crushed Kaine, winning 67 percent of the vote. That amounted to 14,845 votes for Stewart in Franklin County. In Fairfax County, Kaine got 340,061 votes.

Almost all of those voters “are concentrated in a few enclaves just outside Washington, D.C. – aka The Beltway,” Rice noted. “They are also liberal voters – politically, as far from the inclinations of the rest of the state as a soy boy’s interest in stock car racing.”

Also in Northern Virginia, Rep. Dave Brat, a conservative Republican, lost his 7th District seat to Democrat Abigail Spanberger.

“This shouldn’t be surprising given that Northern Virginia is also the nesting and breeding ground for hundreds of thousands of federal workers, who vote Democrat for the same reason that Willie Sutton held up banks – it’s where the money is,” Rice wrote.

“The federal workers who live in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties are able to live in those exorbitantly expensive areas – and support expensive liberal policies – precisely because they have high-paid federal jobs; it’s a financial-political feedback loop. The counties around D.C. are virtually recession proof,” Rice noted.

Voters in Northern Virginia vote their interests “just as the rest of the state does its,” Rice wrote. “The problem is the interests of Northern Virginia couldn’t be more different from those of the rest of Virginia, which would prefer not be bound by them, much less have to help pay for them. Ask someone is Northern California what its like to subsidize the craziness of Los Angeles and San Francisco.”

The solution, Rice wrote, may be “for Northern Virginia and the rest of Virginia to go their separate ways. There is talk about California becoming more than just one state for precisely the same reasons. San Francisco and Los Angeles no more represent the rest of the state than Fairfax represents the southwest counties of Virginia.”

Rice concluded: “It isn’t democratic for a regional minority to hold sway over the physical majority of the state – whether in the Old Dominion or the Golden State. And it’s as politically pointless for conservatives to try to appeal to liberal Northern Virginia voters as it would be to try to sell ribeyes to vegans.”

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